As a professional biologist with over 14 years of experience studying wildlife, I strongly support the ballot initiative to ban the hunting and trapping of mountain lions and bobcats in Colorado.

A recent guest column by Andrew Carpenter argues that voters shouldn’t have the right to ban hunting of cats because they lack technical expertise in wildlife ecology. Well, as someone who does have technical expertise in this area, I can tell you that there is no scientific reason why cats like mountain lions and bobcats need to be hunted.

The column claims that hunting mountain lions is necessary to prevent conflict with humans and protect elk and deer populations. But what does the science say? Peer-reviewed studies have repeatedly found that not only is mountain lion hunting ineffective at preventing conflict, it can actually make it worse. This seemingly counterintuitive fact makes sense when you consider that hunters tend to kill older, dominant males, which causes young, inexperienced males to move in from other populations.

Younger lions are more prone to conflict with people and livestock because they lack the experience to avoid humans and are less adept at catching wild prey. As for deer and elk, a study spanning 11 states and 10 years of data found no evidence that hunting mountain lions led to increased deer populations. As cougar biologist Rick Hopkins put it, “recreational hunting of mountain lions does nothing to protect livestock, human or pet safety, or produce more elk and deer for hunters to shoot.”

Voters should know that an explicit goal of state wildlife agencies is to provide hunting opportunities. In other words, they don’t decide to have a hunting season for mountain lions because science indicates that there is no other choice. They do so because if some people want to hunt mountain lions for fun, they see it as their job to facilitate that. Scientific expertise only factors into the equation in determining how many mountain lions can be killed without causing the whole population to collapse. State wildlife agencies also do not consider animal welfare when setting hunting policy. If voters believe that it is unethical to chase down mountain lions with dogs and then kill them, leaving orphaned kittens to starve to death, then it is up to voters to ban the practice themselves, which is exactly what this initiative would do.

Mickey Pardo
Fort Collins